The seat-wise predictions published by the India Today-Axis My India exit poll were removed from several webpages, including the Axis’ official website, after many on Twitter flagged 'glaringly obvious’ errors in some of its predictions.
The Axis My India web pages containing the state-wise seat share and vote share data had initially displayed a “404 Not Found” error message, but were later restored to reflect the same data – minus the seat-wise predictions.
Multiple Errors
Many on Twitter had pointed out how the exit poll had incorrectly named all five Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttarakhand as Sadulshahar, Ganganagar, Karanpur, Suratgarh and Raisingh Nagar – which are Assembly constituencies.
While others posted screenshots of the exit poll showing Congress winning from Chennai central, a seat it is not even contesting from in favour of its alliance partner, the DMK.
Further, the exit poll changed its prediction for the Sikkim Lok Sabha seat. Initially, it had predicted that the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF) will win the Sikkim seat despite having a lower vote share (44 percent) than the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM), which had got 46 percent votes.
Later in the day, the vote share for the Sikkim seat was deleted from the Axis My India website.
The India Today website has since republished the seat-wise predictions with a disclaimer saying: “Seat by seat analysis is based purely on the popularity of the political party during exit polls and not based on the individual candidate. Hence, Axis My India cannot be held responsible for any variation of the winning or losing of the individual candidate stated in the seat-wise results.”
'It’s Voting, Not a Popularity Contest’
The India Today-Axis Exit Poll was also criticised over its methodology, which claims to be “based purely on the popularity of the political party during exit polls and not based on the individual candidate.”
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